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Show SPRINGVILLE HERALD Thursday, January 6, 2005 Editorial Museum caters to families Have you taken yourself or your family to the Community Commu-nity and Family Night at the Springville Museum of Art? You need to. What a fun, interesting, educational and enjoyable evening to spend with your children, or spouse, or with a friend, or by yourself. We attended the Community and Family Night Monday as we have done other times since the event started, and we so enjoyed our experience. The Springville Museum of art hosts this community event the first Monday of each month. They feature an accomplished ac-complished artist who explains his work along with displaying dis-playing some ofit. The program includes musical entertainment of some kind. Monday's fare featured Alex Oldroyd, a young man who is very talented musically. Oldroyd played the piano, but his ambition is to become a Tabernacle Organist. He has played that organ several times and is well on his way. Oldroyd was joined by members of this year's Art Royalty Roy-alty who performed several musical numbers. What outstanding out-standing talent from these young women! The many children attending enjoyed gluing together pieces of wood creating their own sculptures. Some of their parents joined in the fun of producing a work of art too. Community and Family Night is free to the public, runs from 6 to 8 p.m.-a good time for families. While you are at the community night, you can also enjoy en-joy the exhibits at the museum. We highly recommend Community and Family Night at the Springville Museum of Art. Springville Police report Springville Police had 241 calls last week including 25 of them for animal problems. Matt T. Alvey, 550 E. 180 North, Salem, was arrested for possession of amphetamine ampheta-mine and possession of drug paraphernalia. John Juan Chavez, 940 E. 300 North 408, Payson, was arrested for shoplifting and lewdness. Gary Cunningham, 962 Artistic Circle, Springville, was arrested for driving on a suspended license, possession posses-sion of drug paraphernalia and no seat belt. A female juvenile ju-venile was cited and released to her parents for possession of tobacco by a minor, no insurance in-surance and driving with no driver's license. Kenneth Kade Deaton, 1025 N. 300 West 70, Springville, was cited for possession of alcohol by a minor mi-nor after police were called to a loud party. Paul Matthew Jensen, 1025 N. 300 West 70, Springville, was cited for possession of alcohol alco-hol by a minor at the same party. Jaynes Michael thomas, 310 W. 400 South, Springville, was arrested for five outstanding warrants. Bernadine Gomez Johnson, 980 S. 400 East, Springville, was charged with burglary of a vehicle. Kurt S. Johnson, 33 S. 700 East, Springville, was charged with child abuse. A male juvenile was referred to juvenile court for disorderly conduct and assault. Tracy Lynn Muir, 490 E. Center, Springville, was arrested ar-rested for shoplifting five pair of sunglasses at Wal- Springville Herald 269 E. 400 South Springville, UT 84663 An edition of The Daily Herald, Pulitzer Newspapers, Inc. Subscriptions & Delivery Service ....375-5103 News & Advertising 489-5651 Fax 489-7021 E-mail artcityavpro.com ISPS 513-00 Published Thursdays by Pulitzer Newspapers, Inc., 269 E. 400 South, Springville, Utah 84663 Periodicals postage paid at Springville, Utah 84663 Postmaster: Send address changes to 269 E. 400 South, Springville, UT 84663 Member Audit Bureau of Circulations Newsstand Price $.50 Subscription Rate 1 year - $36.40 (in county) 1 year - $45.40 (out of county) Thursday only delivery or Sunday & Thursday plus holiday deliveries Hobday deliveries include delivery the week of Easter, Memorial, Independence, Pioneer, Labor, Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year's. (For in county subscriptions only.) News We welcome news tips. Call 489-5651 to report a news tip or if you have a comment or a questions. We welcome letters to the editor. All letters must include the author's name ( printed and signed) and a telephone number. We reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, punctuation, taste and length. Letters are welcome on any topic. Mart. A 14-year-old female with her was also arrested for shoplifting diet pills. Donald Lynn Smith, 575 N. 500 East, Spanish Fork, was cited for having no insurance and a vehicle with improper plates. His vehicle was impounded. im-pounded. A briefcase ws taken from a vehicle, and a rifle, X-box, electric blanket, and boom-box boom-box were taken from a home. Police are investigating three incidents of child abuse and one suicide attempt. Thefts included $500 cash from a home; two bicycles; two gas skips; magnetic placards plac-ards from a vehicle; 75 bales of hay from a barn; Christmas Christ-mas lawn ornaments; services ser-vices from the Cracker Barrel; Bar-rel; and a wreath from the Evergreen Cemetery. Mapleton Police report Mapleton Police arrested Nathan Spanos, 151 E. 100 North, Pleasant Grove for an outstanding warrant out of Lehi. They had 266 calls last week including four for animal ani-mal problems. Tools were taken from a garage, and police po-lice are investigating an assault as-sault case where a man beat a woman. Charges are pending. pend-ing. Police handled a call on a family fight and two child custody incidents. Springville council weighs expansion of cramped likaij Caleb Warnock STAFF WRITER Having helped to raise $4.65 million for a new wing of the Springville Museum of Art, City Council members are now in the early stages of putting together a fund-raising fund-raising campaign for a new or expanded library. At a recent City Council work session, Councilman Phillip Bird suggested the campaign. Library director Lynette CatheraU said that with its small space, the library has not been able to keep up with the city's booming population. popula-tion. "Anybody who uses the library li-brary knows how crowded we are," she said. "We just need more room." Mayor Fritz Boyer, who worked as a fund-raiser for the museum before becoming becom-ing mayor, said he believes members of the library board and City Council could be successful in a library fund-raising effort. "I think we've learned enough from the museum to help the library," he said. The library board has discussed dis-cussed the idea and even approached ap-proached two potential donors, Bird said. But a formal for-mal campaign is not likely until the city has a clear idea how much money is needed, Legislature to consider RDA reform bill Senator Curt Bramble (R-Provo) (R-Provo) will be sponsoring legislation this year to prohibit pro-hibit city abuses of so-called redevelopment agencies (RDAs). The Utah Taxpayers Association Asso-ciation is teaming up with the Utah Association or Counties and the Utah School Boards Association in lobbying aggressively ag-gressively for this bill. All three groups have identified this bill as one of their highest high-est priority bills for the upcoming up-coming legislative session. RDAs were originally designed de-signed to convert "blighted," economically depressed neighborhoods, typically in Ballot Initiatives - the safety valve is being used against those it was intended to protect Howard Stephenson PRESIDENT UTAHTAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION The right of initiative and referendum is an important tool to safeguard the people's ability to override unresponsive unrespon-sive elected officials who, from time to time might ignore ig-nore the will of the majority regarding a single issue. Twenty-five of the 50 states have Constitutions which allow al-low direct legislation through citizen initiatives. Most of these states are west of the Mississippi River. In some states, voters have been schizophrenic in their treatment of ballot initiatives. initia-tives. Colorado voters, who enacted a Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) which restricts re-stricts growth in government govern-ment revenues, also approved ap-proved Amendment 23, which requires an ever-increasing portion of the budget bud-get to be dedicated to K-12 education. Consequently, the Colorado Col-orado state budget is facing severe cuts as education spending absorbs any increases in-creases in revenues. TABOR was pushed by the fiscal conservatives con-servatives crowd while Amendment 23 was pushed by the teacher unions. Colorado Col-orado voters approved both of these incompatible measures. mea-sures. Oregon's Bill Sizemore has become the nation's leading initiative sponsor, having placed numerous measures on the Oregon ballot. Fortunately Fortu-nately for Oregon, Size-more's Size-more's thrust has been in the areas of limited government and lower taxes. He has learned over the years that more than anything else, the ballot language describing the measure has the most significant effect on the success suc-cess of the initiative. California's experience with initiatives took off in 1978 when Proposition 13 put a 1 cap on property taxes. Since the tax-cutting initiatives initia-tives of the '70s and '80s, the spending lobby has also uti- and how it would be used. The city needs a new or renovated public safety building, city hall, library and public works building, and there is demand from some residents for a recreation recre-ation center, he said. A proposed pro-posed bond issue to fund all those was defeated by voters last year, leaving the city in a bind to fund any of the projects. pro-jects. A new public safety building build-ing is the City Council's priority, pri-ority, followed by a new or renovated City Hall, he said. Because it could be years and millions of dollars before those two projects come to fruition, an expanded or renovated ren-ovated library could be a long time coming. In addition to the lack of a clear plan for a new library, Bird said the library board's lack of fund-raising experience experi-ence is also a hurdle. Some improvements are being made, Catherall said. Just a month ago, the entrance en-trance to the library was renovated ren-ovated to handle traffic more efficiently. And the library has applied for a grant to update its computer com-puter system. In addition, city computer staff have now made it possible for patrons pa-trons to check when library books are due and available using their home Internet. inner cities, to productive, economically vibrant areas. RDAs are frequently known as tax increment financing fi-nancing (TIF). The Tax increment in-crement refers to the increased in-creased property tax due to the developer's investment. For example, if the property proper-ty tax of a "blighted" parcel is $100,000 prior to development develop-ment and increases to $2,500,000 after development, develop-ment, the tax increment would be $2,400,000. Normally, Nor-mally, local governments like counties and school districts dis-tricts would receive 100 of the property tax increment. However, under RDAs, most lized the power of the ballot initiative. In recent years, increasing in-creasing debt and taxes by initiative has been a significant signifi-cant factor in destabilizing California's finances, credit rating and budget. These initiatives generally target select groups of taxpayers tax-payers for higher taxes and dedicate the tax revenue for new spending programs. Special interests want a special spe-cial deal: They want permanent perma-nent funding with new taxes, spending that is locked in, and spending for which no one is accountable. According to Larry McCarthy Mc-Carthy of the California Taxpayers Tax-payers Association, manipulation manipu-lation of the initiative process is becoming more evident each election cycle in California. Hucksters invest in slick sale pitches, signature signa-ture gathering to qualify the initiative and a PR campaign. Passage of these tax measures mea-sures results in the diversion of billions of tax dollars over short periods of time. Over the years, Utah voters vot-ers have been quite discriminating discrimi-nating in evaluating ballot initiatives. Voters have determined de-termined since 1960 that only four of 18 initiatives on the Utah statewide ballot were worthy of approval. However, Howev-er, the techniques used in California and Colorado have recently come to Utah, and the spending lobby is determined deter-mined to break their losing streak in Utah by pumping more and more out-of-state money into slick campaigns. The spending lobby realizes real-izes that tax increases are more easily achieved at the ballot box than through the legislative process.. After all, misinf orming the public with an extensive, well-financed media campaign backed up with favorable media coverage cover-age and sympathetic editori-alboards editori-alboards is easier than persuading per-suading elected legislators to support bad public policy, especially es-pecially when taxpayers nave a watchdog group that lobbies legislators on an individual indi-vidual basis and speaks to these issues in committee hearings. Initiative 1 - the so-called open space tax - was a surprising sur-prising setback for the spending lobby, but the spenders are regrouping and will be back in 2006 and 2008 to target taxpayers with more state and local tax increases in-creases by ballot initiatives. This time, it won't just be the environmentalists but the entire en-tire spending coalition, including in-cluding poverty groups, Congress approves ban on Internet taxes until 2007 The US House of Representatives followed the lead of the Senate in banning state and local Internet access taxes tax-es until November 1, 2007. The House had been waiting for the Senate to pass a permanent ban but has approved the legislation after the Senate made two minor amendments. amend-ments. The Utah Taxpayers Association believes this moratorium morato-rium on Internet access taxes is a great step in the right direction to ensure that the Internet does not become burdened with taxes like telephone and cell phone access has been. The ban expands the definition of exempt Internet access ac-cess to include all DSL and wireless Internet access. The original moratorium was enacted in October of 1998; the original grandfather clause will still apply to all taxes imposed im-posed before that date. This moratorium should not be confused with the streamlined sales tax project which seeks to provide states with the ability to collect sales taxes from out-of-state vendors who sell to consumers within their borders. bor-ders. The moratorium prohibits taxes on Internet access not taxes on the sale or merchandise ordered over the Internet. of these "incremental" property prop-erty tax revenues are diverted divert-ed back to the developer to cover infrastructure costs, costs usually paid by the developer de-veloper anyway. Cities claim that RDAs are needed in order to create jobs and stimulate the economy. econo-my. Cities also claim that these additional property tax dollars are "incremental" which means that school districts dis-tricts and counties are not really re-ally losing money anyway because these projects are generating "new" Tax revenues. rev-enues. The cities' claims about RDAs are completely with- government employees, mass transit supporters, the education establishment, and people who feel that taxpayers taxpay-ers should build stadiums for professional soccer teams. The Taxpayers Association Associa-tion led the successful fight to defeat Initiative 1, despite being outspent by 40 to 1. The association framed the debate, identified the problems prob-lems with the initiative, formed a coalition of supporters, sup-porters, and explained to voters vot-ers why Initiative ! needed to be defeated. Next time, we will have to step up our efforts even more. To stop the spending lobby in 2006 and 2008, we need to let Utah's taxpayers know that- Utahns already bear the 3rd highest statelocal tax and fee burden in the nation. Government need to focus fo-cus on critical needs such as transportation, education and public safety and not nice-to-haves like downtown soccer stadiums. Government needs to address critical problems with sound fiscal proposals, not sound-good touchy -feely programs with do not ade- auately and efficiently ad-ress ad-ress the problems. Government spending can be made more efficient and productive by instituting sound reforms, such as tuition tax credits and vouchers. Government needs to scrutinize existing policies, including the wasteful and counterproductive practice of giving millions to tax dollars dol-lars per year through RDAs to developers. In 2002, the spending lobby tried to raise taxes by initiative. initia-tive. They spent less than $500,000 and received 38 of the vote. In 2004, after learning from their mistakes in 2002, they tried again, spent nearly $2 million, and increased their share of the vote to 45 . In 2006, they will be back with even more money, a bigger coalition, sharper sound bites, and a slicker PR campaign. We need your help to stop them once again. As the spending lobby gets more sophisticated and has more money to burn, taxpayers taxpay-ers need to pool their resources re-sources to defeat the next tax increase proposals. That's why every taxpayer should assist in establishing a campaign fund to fight tax and spend initiatives. To learn more how you can do this, go to www.utahtaxpay-ers.org. out merit when RDAs are used to subsidize retail activity activi-ty or other types of economic econom-ic activity that relies on local customers. Subsidizing retail through RDAs simply shifts jobs and tax revenues from one Utah community to another an-other Utah community No net jobs re created, and no net tax revenues are generated gener-ated that could not have otherwise oth-erwise existed without the RDA subsidy. Not one additional addi-tional pair or shoes or loaf of bread has been sold in Utah due to RDAs. Cities are using RDAs to steal sales tax revenues from each other and re using school district and count property tax dollars to do this. Retail will occur without RDA subsidies. Retail activity activi-ty is driven by location and consumer demand and therefore there-fore does not need to be subsidized. sub-sidized. People have been selling goods and services to each other for thousands of years, long before . RDAs were established. So-called "incremental" tax revenues from RDA-sub-sidized retail businesses are not new money that school districts can do without. These so-called "incremental" "incremen-tal" revenues are either shifted shift-ed from existing retail businesses busi-nesses or are revenues generated gen-erated by population growth, revenues that local governments govern-ments need to address the costs associated with population popula-tion growth. RDAs are nearly never used to address "blight." Thankfully, Utah has very little blight. Unfortunately, blight is a subjective term and attempts to legally define de-fine blight are typically meaningless. Cities nave designed de-signed open fields in Draper and middle class neighborhoods neighbor-hoods in West Valley city as blight. One tax entity, cities in this case, should not be able to take tax property tax dollars dol-lars from another tax entity, typically school districts, without their authorization. School districts generally oppose op-pose RDAs but are usually outvoted since school districts dis-tricts have only two of the eight votes on the tax entity committee even though school districts collect 55 of property taxes statewide. RDAs grant preferential property tax treatment to one competitor compared to others. Many existing retailers retail-ers are not subsidized by RDAs but have to compete against new retailers who are frequently subsidized by RDAs. Diversion of property tax dollars to RDAs has increased in-creased in recent years at a rate that is nearly double the rate of total property tax revenue growth. Bramble's bill will prohibit cities from using RDAs to subsidize retail and other business activity that is patronized pa-tronized by local customers. The bill would eliminate RDA subsidies for the following fol-lowing types of businesses: General retail including big boxes and strip malls; office and professional parks; auto dealerships; movie theaters; stadiums. Due to increased awareness aware-ness by the public and by legislators leg-islators concerning RDA abuses, the Utah Taxpayers Association is confident that significant RDA reform will occur this year. The Springville Herald Customer Service 375-5103 489-5651 Fax 489-7021 239 L 400 S. 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